Loyal readers might recall that in our November/December issue we ran a piece warning about the dangers of consolidation in the American beer market, arguing that creeping monopolization threatened both...

There's a lot of talk coming from conservatives lately about Obamacare leading to a shocking series of premium increases in private insurance policies that will quickly produce another big political...

With the recent retirement of Sarah Palin from her grotesquely lucrative career as a Fox commentator, I immediately thought of another person who was inadvertently catapulted to national prominence: Shirley...

There's been a long-standing debate in U.S. policy circles about the intersection of race, economics and health care quality. In the January/February issue of the Washington Monthly, senior editor Phillip...

If you read the transcript of the president's immigration policy speech in Las Vegas today, it mostly follows very familiar tracks. It defines "comprehensive reform" as including better enforcement at...

Well, it only took five-and-a-half years to get another shot at comprehensive immigration reform after the Senate, in one of those maneuvers genuine filibuster reform might eliminate, killed a motion...

Just when I thought that the National Review Institute demonstrated that Republicans are ready to compromise, Paul Ryan outlined a somewhat apocalyptic vision of budget negotiations there on Saturday. According...

Perhaps seeking to enliven the dull confirmation hearings over John Kerry's nomination to serve as Secretary of State, Politico's Darren Samuelsohn and Jonathan Allen have penned a piece about Kerry...

Soon after then-Senator Sam Brownback saw his presidential ambitions fade in 2007 when Mike Huckabee outflanked him as the candidate of hard-core Iowa anti-choicers and home schoolers, he turned his...

The conservative reaction to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's announcement that the military would abolish its arbitrary restriction against women serving in positions defined as "combat roles" is predictable but a...

So if you've been semi-aware of the fast-developing story of state-level Republicans in battleground states proposing changes in electoral college allocations, here's the clearest account so far, from Emory's Alan...

I will be watching for a transcript of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's speech to the Republican National Committee's winter meeting in Charlotte tonight with considerable anticipation. It looks like he's...

One of the more bizarre phenomena transpiring across the country--sort of a slow-motion riot--involves the efforts of (mostly Republican) governors and state legislators to deny their citizens the benefits of...

Late last week USAToday and the Gallup organization announced, as Politico's Dylan Byers reported, "a mutual decision to end their 20-year partnership." As anyone familiar with decisions to dissolve everything...

Whatever else you think about the president's second inaugural address--its combative tone, its choice of issues to emphasize or ignore, its relationship to current disputes in Washington, and even its...

In his litany of anathemas aimed at today's conservative extremists during the second inaugural address, the president said: "We cannot mistake absolutism for principle." That could have well been aimed...

The normally very accurate Israeli exit polls show Bibi Netanyahu's Likud Beytenu party (a combination of the old Likud with Avigdor Lieberman's hard-right Yisrael Beiteinu grouping) winning the largest number...

As House Republicans prepare to pass their rather convoluted temporary debt-limit increase legislation (requiring the Senate to pass a budget or face a constitutionally dubious pay cutoff), Dave Weigel notes...

Among the sweet and sour sentiments expressed during yesterday's Inaugural festivities, this bit of news struck a decidedly sour note: Speaking after Sunday's Humana Challenge, Mickelson hinted at what could...

Without question, the single most surprising passage--not so much in its existence, but in its length, central placement, and unambiguous language--in the president's second inaugural address involved climate change: We,...

Over the weekend, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Frederick Harris, a political science professor at Columbia, which argues that Barack Obama has failed to adequately address "the persistence...

The New York Times' Opinionator features a great piece by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz about a subject that gets far too little attention: the relationship between economic inequality and...

Understanding that a restive press corps wanted something tangible to report after a three-day House Republican retreat, Eric Cantor announced the House would take up and pass a three-month increase...

A new study has been published by the U.S. Military Academy's Combatting Terrorism Center analyzing the potential threat of far-right groups espousing violence to achieve their goals. Like a DHS-authorized...

In drawing up the agenda for the House Republican retreat underway in Williamsburg, I am very confident in asserting that organizers did not for a moment consider America's preeminent number-cruncher,...

As House Republicans sit through presentations and discussions about their immediate and long-term fate in Williamsburg this weekend, the buzzkill background includes not only the 2012 election results and the...

The Washington Monthly's new January/February issue is devoted in no small part to a re-examination of U.S. race relations upon the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the re-election...

The Plum Line's Greg Sargent reports this afternoon on a conversation with former Solicitor General Charles Fried, who served during Ronald Reagan's second term. Fried abundantly mocks the idea that...

A very slow news day, but that should change tomorrow when the president formally unveils the administration's gun regulation proposals. Expect Second Amendment absolutists to begin firing in the air...

One of the implicit (and sometimes explicit) questions posed in the new January/February issue of the Washington Monthly is whether Barack Obama's election and re-election as president has actually helped...

I've been reading the Washington Monthly pretty regularly since I discovered the publication a little over thirty years ago. With this background, let me say the January/February issue, released today,...

With a ponderous condescension that ill-befits a recently failed presidential candidate and a United States Senator who has largely distinguished himself by drawing attention to the vast gulf that separates...

When President Barack Obama began floating the name of Republican Chuck Hagel, the former U.S. senator from Nebraska, to replace Leon Panetta as secretary of defense, the Washington punditocracy scratched...

As regular readers know, I rant regularly about the well-known but often ignored problem of the "two electorates"--one large and relatively diverse that votes in presidential years, one significantly smaller,...

Slate's David Weigel, in noting the semi-psychotic frenzy breaking out among Second Amendment absolutists in response to allusions by the vice president and others about actions the administration can take...

John Boehner should probably stop doing interviews. His reported talk with the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore that was published Monday under the provocative title "The Education of John Boehner"...

That perpetually interesting Daniel Larison, who writes for that surprisingly stimulating paleoconservative periodical and site, The American Conservative, penned a response to a critique of Republican foreign policy done by...

If I haven't grossed you out with the last post discussing such phenomena as....Congress: here are some mid-day news nuggets: * Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski digs up Chuck Hagel's 1996-vintage extremist...

As progressives (generally) get themselves reluctantly roused up to fight for Chuck Hagel's confirmation as Defense Secretary, Peter Beinert has penned the most passionate argument for why the Nebraskan could...

Before discussion of the Hagel nomination as Defense Secretary becomes totally a matter of partisan Kabuki, and/or revolves around ancient offensive quotes from the Nebraskan about "the Jewish Lobby" or...

Evening Reads: -Bernie Sanders told MSNBC's Ed Schultz that he's ready to do battle with President Obama as Republicans threaten to engineer a government default in February's debt ceiling negotiations....

Here are some noteworthy non Fiscal Cliff (you're welcome) related articles: -President Obama said on Thursday that he would attempt to sidestep whistleblower protection provisions in the National Defense Authorization...

Alarms are going up all over the progressive commentariat about the early signs of Beltway complacency--particularly in the MSM--about Republicans threats to wreak holy havoc on the economy by taking...

David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, who has been obsessively following late returns, provisional ballot rulings, and other adjustments, has issued his final tally of the 2012 presidential election...

If you're really tired of contemporary politics and want to read something very different with vast political implications, check out Kevin Drum's fascinating article for MoJo on the growing evidence...

This isn't real news, but Ezra Klein's scorching documentation in his Bloomberg column of exactly how bad the just-ended 112th Congress has been deserves repetition and reflection: What’s the record...

Kudos to National Review's Kevin Williamson for coming right out and articulating the "conservative" (for once the quote marks are truly necessarily) perspective that is usually left just beneath the...

Feed the Political Animal

Political Animal

Suddenly, it's in both parties' interests to fight the broader decline of marriage. Here's the case for a "marriage opportunity" agenda. By David Blankenhorn, William Galston, Jonathan Rauch, and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead